If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I'm genuinely curious how many of these contenders are going to find themselves a year or two behind the Oculus Rift? It seems like OR had quite the head start, and are tackling difficult problems. Will its competitors end up releasing with major issues like latency? Or get delayed another year?

Valve's Vive? Re Vive? Whatever it's called, from what I've read, it does sound like they've been working on it for quite a while, because the reports said nothing about the teething troubles you had with early reports on the Oculus Rift.

So yeah, first impressions

I'd forgotten that the DK2 comes with a positional tracker. Being able to lean in a inspect objects closer was very cool. Played a few different demos:

Senza Peso - a VR opera with some quite amazing visuals.4th Floor Studio - just a very realistic looking appartment. I liked leaning in and inspecting the trinkets on all the shelfs.AirDrift - flying game, it was alright.Motorbike - this one was surprisingly good! Trials esque game where you float alongside the bike. Looking over to the right you can see the course stretching out ahead. The bike with the little guy on it looks like a little toy. But, like, the most realistic toy ever with a very human like character on it that ragdolls and falls off when you slam too hard into something. As I'm writing this I realize it probably doesn't sound that amazing, like, sure, we've had ragdoll motorbike guys in games for ages. But just imagine seeing a tiny motorbike guy driving around on the desk in front of you! Ok, it's not quite that realistic, but it's still preeeetty realistic. When you see it you're like "whoa, check out this tiny guy on a bike!" Lunar Flight - I've said it before and I'll say it again, Lunar Flight is the best Oculus Rift game. Love it.

After 2-3 hours in and out of various games I'm not feeling particularly nauseous, though AirDrift did make me a tad woozy at times. The higher resolution and positional tracking makes it a clear improvement over the DK1, but it's not... um... mindblowing, in any way. I mean if you already had your mind blown with DK1, DK2 won't blow it all over again. It's merely an improvement on a mindblowing thing.

I got to play with a bunch of Occulus Rift demos at the GDC and was frankly a bit underwhelmed by the overall quality (tho the head motion tracking was great) and slightly confusing "Controlling head motion with a joystick vs my head". That is until i tried a simple demo of walking in a small and well modeled basement.

With high level of detail, realistic textures and lighting it was extremely immersive. Even tho i could still tell it looked gamey, it felt far more real than a simple FPS and gave me flashbacks to when i was in just such a basement few years back. Its hard to describe it but for a few moments i really felt i was there. I almost instinctively reached out my hand to grab an item at one point.

Originally Posted by WingedKagouti

A more advance version of the Power Glove could be part of that, with some sort of rumble effect built into various parts. Could be used to provide feedback on touching/activating something.

Funnily enough I got to play around with exactly somthing like that at the GDC. It wasn't very good (still early prototype) but had several vibrators that would get triggered based on touch. Tho it felt a bit odd - holding a ball doesn't make your fingers vibrate in real life, so there was some disconnect. But unless we have a whole gizmo that can push back at your fingers that might be the closest we can get.

Originally Posted by ZylonBane

This suggestion is so insanely stupid for all but the most glacially-paced games that only this image can properly sum up how supremely ill-conceived an idea it is.

Haptics exist for a reason.

Moving a virtual hand in 3D space using a 2D device != moving a virtual hand in 3D space using your hand.

A VR mech sim, a not only that but a good VR mech sim. The physics of the thing are amazing. Slow and lumbering and lurching, it feels heavy as hell. And not only that, but when you look down and see your body(the pilot's body that is) his movements actually mirror your own. Like when you turn from side to side or lean forward he does the same. That's a first in these types of games actually. Until now all the pilot bodies I've seen in Lunar Flight and other VR sims have been perfectly static. The production values in this thing are great. The current demo is just one tutorial mission and one combat mission. Tho the mission is pretty easy really. The enemy mechs don't have great range, so you can just stay far enough back and keep hitting them with lasers and missiles until they die. Then again, this is just a demo, or proof-of-concept. More advanced AI can come later. For now, it's a super awesome VR experience. I highly recommend it to anyone who happens to have access to a Oculus Rift.

Funnily enough I got to play around with exactly somthing like that at the GDC. It wasn't very good (still early prototype) but had several vibrators that would get triggered based on touch. Tho it felt a bit odd - holding a ball doesn't make your fingers vibrate in real life, so there was some disconnect. But unless we have a whole gizmo that can push back at your fingers that might be the closest we can get.

Given that an improved Power Glove (or even full body suit) as a VR controller has been part of sci-fi media for a long time, I would have been surprised if no one had attempted to make one at the stage the various VR headsets are by now.

Other stuff I played today:
Windlands - open world exploration platforming stuff with some pretty cool climbing and swinging mechanics. Kinda feels like a first person version of Grow Home.
From Ashes - educational title that tells the story of the universe. Some pretty freaky parts when dinos and bears and octopii get right up IN YO GRILL
Pixel Rift - You play a schoolgirl playing a game on her Game Girl handheld gaming device in class while trying to make sure teacher doesn't notice. Then the game pops out of the device and starts getting played out on your desk. Pretty epic stuff.
Discovering Space - space exploration in our solar system. You fly around in a spaceship at speeds of up to Warp 6, and you can even enter the atmospheres of planets. Kinda No Man's Sky-ish.
Buildville - Minecraft-clone, but designed for VR play. Kinda cool.

In Buildville and Windlands I did start feel a tad queezy while playing, but the others I probably could've stayed in for hours. After a day of playing Oculus Rift games I'm glad to say I'm not feeling particularly nauseous afterwards. A big improvement from the DK1! Having a new, powerful computer which can keep these games at high framerates helps too.

Had a strange and amazing experience with the Rift just now. I was playing Assetto Corsa with a steering wheel, driving a few different cars, but it wasn't before I got in the BMW Z4 that my characters hands in the game were in the exact same position as my hands IRL. It was uncanny how much the 3D models hands felt like my own as I turned the wheel, and I kept having this slight tingly itch on the back of my hands, expecting to feel the fabric of the in-game characters gloves, though of course my hands were bare IRL. /

It's mainly a matter of resolution and FPS, from what I understand. The Oculus Rift devkit 2 has a resolution of 1920x1080, if I'm not mistaken, and that's for two eyes, so each eye has less horizontal resolution. As a result, while the display is an improvement over DK1 it's still fairly low-res, and it's expected that they'll want to up that for the consumer version. I don't think they've revealed the final resolution, but I'd imagine that it'll be similar to 4K in terms of the number of pixels that need to be handled.

Add to this the FPS and latency; the lower these are, the worse the overall experience in VR. I believe that the solutions currently in development specify ideal framerates of 75-90 fps to make the experience reasonably smooth and reduce 'VR sickness' (which, as far as I know, is so much more of an issue than the motion sickness some people get with a 2D display).

tl;dr: VR will have to output at a higher-than-normal resolution, with fairly high, consistent framerates, which translates into heftier requirements for our poor PCs.